PRS scheme needs reinforcing

The poverty reduction strategies (PRS) initiative, launched by the World Bank and IMF in 1999, has helped focus attention on poverty but needs strengthening, the bank’s independent operations evaluation department (OED) said.It said most PRS papers completed by low income countries “focus largely on public expenditures, and pay more attention to social sector spending than to infrastructure, rural development and other areas with poverty reduction potential”. It added that more needed to be done to find out what development and poverty reduction policies worked best.The OED said the initiative had added the most value in countries where government leadership and aid management were already strong, but said the initiative had been difficult to implement because there was no mechanism to account for differing country conditions and no milestones to help assess progress.